…. Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it’s early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about “carbon dating.” This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you’ve gotten to the “evolution module” (more on the “evolution module” another time … or come to the Bell on Friday to hear me rant about that in person).

Jeanne d’Arc was a very influential 10th grader. I understand she gave her Life Science teachers a very hard time. This is the only contemporary depiction of Joan of Arc. Some say the banner reads “IHS” but I’m pretty sure it says “AIG.”

The student is talking about C14 dating and how it “has problems.” But you are a life science teacher and can’t think of a single point in your class that you really touch on C14. Dating in the evolution section does not involve C14. This is for later time periods, more in the area of archaeology, and you know nothing about it. So you brush off the question but are left with an uneasy feeling.

Repost from gregladen.com

Next class, probably just after class, the same student, again at a moment that give you zero warning and usually no time to think of how to respond, mentions something about the Laws of Thermodynamics. This question you find more intersting and possibly even useful as the starting point of a “teachable moment…” The nature of life itself includes the fact that life works upstream against entropy. That one utterly mind-blowing aspect of life is really all you need to define life itself. If that was the only thing you used to define life, you would have very few non-life entities or events accidentally included. If you can truly understand … I mean really, really truly at a detailed level understand …. how the heck life works against the gradient of entropy, then you will understand a LOT (like, at the MA level, at least) of what is going on. To get a believable and reasonable level of understanding of this, you must get more than just basic cell function … it is not good enough to just say “The mitochondria are the tiny little powerhouses of the cell” because you have not explained how that works. You need to know about ATP and stuff. Really, you even need to know why cells use ATP as energy but none of the other obvious forms of energy that they could use … the phylogenetic effect at a very basic level indeed. And so on.

But those thoughts and other thoughts were only a digression in your own mind, because, you then crawl out of your private thinking place and the inquiring student comes back into focus … standing there being jostled amid a stream of exiting students, gazing innocently at you, waiting to see what you are going to say about thermodynamics … and your brain says … “hey, this is not about thermodynamics and the wonders of the Krebs Cycle. It’s about … it’s about …. creationism….”

Oh crap.

Now, the creationist reading this will say, “Aha! The teacher is annoyed at the creationist, and the great Doctor of Evolutionary Biology is disturbed that such difficult questions come from the mouth’s of babes … these simple honest questions that are in fact impossible to answer! The Evilutionists would prefer if these questions were never even asked….”

BZZZZZZZZGGGGKKKKKZZZZZTTTG

That was the “oh please, cut out the crap” buzzer going off. The annoying creationist’s voices must now stop … after a week of feverish delirium I don’t need that crap.. This is my head, and your voices need to go somewhere else… … OK, that’s better.

Back to the issue at hand… This student is not an innocent child asking legitimate questions. Child? Yes. Innocent? That needs, in my opinion, to be demonstrated, but from a teacher’s perspective, OK, you can assume innocent until proven nefarious. But wait and see what happens. Yesterday it was C14, today it was Thermodynamics. Tomorrow it will be intelligent design at the cellular level, later on it will be missing transitional forms, and so on. The student might or might not tell you … perhaps as an admission, perhaps as a proud statement (“See, I researched this.”) that these questions are mostly coming from the Answers in Genesis web site.

Did this student find the web site through a private initiative, or perhaps by accident? Did a parent point this student to the web site? Did a Sunday school teacher or pastor tell the student about it? All of these things tend to happen, but the latter two are the most common. There is a pretty good chance that this student has been put up to this, but most likely willingly. Little 10th graders can be the strongest crusaders. Jeanne d’Arc was in tenth grade, if I remember correctly. So this is not going to end quietly.

The student will eventually start to bring these issues up during class, not just after class or before class. Most likely the other students in the class will get annoyed and protest to the student directly … they are, after all, there to learn the biology for their own reasons (like getting a high school diploma or passing a test or whatever) and regardless of their own religious views, they are not interested in this disruption. Even if they did want to get a creationist or religious perspective, they probably don’t want to hear it from this kid even outside of the class. Jeanne d’Arc might have been a tenth grader, but most tenth graders, regardless of the level of their zealotry, are not Jeanne d’Arc. Their discourse does not tend to capture the audience and they are unlikely to make a credible case that they have been visited by The Virgin.

There are insufficient resources available for teachers to use to help them to deal with this sort of situation. I am committed to assembling some of the resources that do exist and making them available here. You can visit the National Center for Science Education and find some things. I promise you that any teacher (preferably using, at least on first contact, your official teacher email address so we know you are less likely to be a Trojan Horse) can contact any one or more of the bloggers you know of (yours truly included) off-air to have a private chat, and you will not be sent away. If anyone sends you away let me know and I’ll kick their self-righteous ass.

I would also like to recommend this site, which I think is fairly new:

AiGbusted is dedicated to exposing creationist hoaxes, especially the leading organization, Answers in Genesis.

Teacher, listen to this: There is a wide range of possible responses to the situation outlined above (or some other similar situation). Only some of them are legal. Only some of them are ethical. There are things you can do that may make perfect sense but that will significantly enhance the probability of your school or district being successfully sued.

Anyone who tells you there is an easy way to handle this is misinformed.

When Pastor Bob arms your student with creationist claims and sends him or her into your classroom, he is creating not just a disruption or an annoyance, but a professionally dangerous situation. Most likely he knows this and is doing this to generate trouble. He is, obviously, using this child as a pawn in a game that he feels he is prepared to play and maybe win. He knows he is getting points with god by doing this (as does the pawn-child) and he cares not one bit about you or your career. He sees disruption of your science class, and thus of the science education of the other students in your class, as a good thing. This may, indeed, be his primary objective other than his own salvation from sin.

While it is true that almost no teachers are prepared through formal training to handle this sort of situation without risking career or the school’s legal budget, or losing control of the class, or losing the pawn-child, most teachers can avoid trouble by keeping a few guidelines in mind.

You can’t talk about religion in your science classroom. This means you can’t have a conversation about creationism in your classroom. You may have to pull the student aside and indicate that this discussion will not happen. The student will object, indicating that “intelligent design” is not creationism. You must very firmly indicate to the student that according to the current, standing law, intelligent design IS creationism, and creationism IS religion, and religion cannot be discussed in any way whatsoever in a science classroom without risk of breaking the law. It may be necessary to indicate to the student that continued attempts to bring this conversation into the classroom have to be seen as a disciplinary problem.

Let’s talk about that angle for a moment. Have you ever had a student who will not stop talking about sex or related anatomy whenever an opportunity arises in class… blurting things out and disrupting class? Think about that scenario for a moment. The student is not special ed or special needs. The student blurts out a profanity and/or sexual or anatomical reference four or five times per class, giggles with his buddies, attempts to recruit those around him into this shenanigans even if you keep moving him, etc. This is a disciplinary issue, and you have ways of addressing it as a teacher.

A student who has been informed that there will be no discussion of creationist claims from AIG or anywhere else in the classroom, that ID is creationism, etc. but continues to do so is no different. As a teacher, and as a particular teacher in a particular classroom, you can’t be told by me or anyone else how to deal with this, but you must deal with it properly. A chat with a dean/assistant principal, councilors, etc. is in order.

And if anyone in the admin, your department head or any colleagues tell you to lighten up, that the students can express their religious views in class because of the first amendment, etc. etc., then you are on the next level of difficulties, beyond what we can do here in this one blog post. Seek outside help. Drop me a line. Contact NCSE. Get a lawyer.

I want to end with a very specific idea that I’ve seen suggested many times among teachers, and it is something that you CAN NOT do. You can’t do this. There are books out there, such as and especially Ken Miller’s “Finding Darwin’s God” that deal with the religion/science interface in the area of evolution. I have seen it suggested that teachers can recommend a book like “Finding Darwin’s God” to students or parents. You can not do this. Miller’s book is about reconciling religion … and a particular subset of religion, a particular area of Christianity … with science. As a science teacher, in the context of a science classroom, if you recommend this book, you would be promoting religion in general, and a religion in particular. It may sound like a good idea, and it may seem perfectly sensible and innocent. But you would be violating the Establishment Clause. To my knowledge, this exact scenario has not been tested in the courts, but I don’t think you want to be the teacher on the witness stand when it is.

(Personally, I think if you take this tact, you should lose your job.)

The truth is that the legal protections supporting the teaching of real evolutoinary biology in the classroom do not arise because real evolutionary biology is … ah … real, and creationism is not. The importance and veracity of the science itself is only part of the argument, even though it should be, and I think could be, the only argument. We don’t have slack-jawed yokels sneaking onto the school board so that they can force Language Arts teachers to tell the students that “i aint got no George Strait tunes, you gotta brang soma his CD’s over, ye’hear?” or to insist that the shop teacher tell the students “you know, these safety devices … especially the ones on electric saws … really are a pain in the ass, so the first thing we do every semester is learn how to disable the safety devices” and so on. Those are arguments about quality, and you can make arguments about quality all you want regarding life sciences in the classroom and no one will care even a little. Creationism is not allowed in the classroom because it is religion, not because it is stoopid. Which is a great convenience for you as a life science teacher, but rather shameful, at the broader social and political level, when you think about it.

Comments

I’ve found that some students, once they learn you can be side-tracked with off topic questions, will constantly ask questions aimed to side track (presumably to keep less “testable information” in the lecture).

The answer: just succinctly state that the student’s questions are a little outside the lecture or the scope of the course, and offer to talk the student after class or during office hours.

That will usually discourage 90% of the troublemakers because they don’t want to waste their time with this nonsense, only your time.

If the student protests about you not answering the questions, you can quickly squelch them by promising some homework questions on the topic for the next assignment. Be sure to follow through with the assignment. Then let the students police themselves.

(Besides, the assignment will ensure that the students really do learn that these creationist claims are nonsense; it’s knowledge everyone should be armed with).

While *REQUIRING* government-school students to read a book such as “Finding Darwin’s God” or Dr. Francis Collins’ “The Language of God” would be a violation of the First Amendment, I don’t see why merely offering it as a suggestion for outside reading in response to a student’s inquiry would be. It’s voluntary and not part of the class, so that to me would fall under a personal interaction between the teacher and the student rather than an official school sanction of the book.

I can remember my high school Latin teacher giving me the name of a Latin hymnal after I asked him about it one time after class. I didn’t take that as the school promoting Catholicism but rather as a personal favor.

There is actually case law on this, and no, it is not OK. Teachers play a special role in the classroom, as role models, leaders, etc. and there is an important social and power differential. A teacher’s suggestion is too easily a form or promotion.

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